Seattle's SR99 tunnel opening pushed to early 2019, viaduct to close 3 weeks ahead in early Jan.

Officials from the state and city outlined preparations of 'longest highway closure in Puget Sound history'

Brian Nielsen, administrator of the Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement Program, speaks to reporters on Monday, Sept. 17, about details of the viaduct's final closure and the tunnel opening. Nielsen said the viaduct will close on Jan. 11, about three weeks before the tunnel will open.

Brian Nielsen, administrator of the Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement Program, speaks to reporters on Monday, Sept. 17, about details of the viaduct's final closure and the tunnel opening. Nielsen said the

Brian Nielsen, administrator of the Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement Program, speaks to reporters on Monday, Sept. 17, about details of the viaduct's final closure and the tunnel opening. Nielsen said the viaduct will close on Jan. 11, about three weeks before the tunnel will open.

Brian Nielsen, administrator of the Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement Program, speaks to reporters on Monday, Sept. 17, about details of the viaduct's final closure and the tunnel opening. Nielsen said the

Seattle's SR99 tunnel opening pushed to early 2019, viaduct to close 3 weeks ahead in early Jan.

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Seattle's long-awaited state Route 99 tunnel, the underground highway that will replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct through downtown, will not open by year's end.

Officials announced on Monday that the tunnel was expected to open the first week of February next year, months later than had been projected by both the state and the tunnel contractor since at least late 2017. But the state Department of Transportation refused to call the change in plans a delay.

"It was always our plan to open the tunnel in early 2019," said Brian Nielsen, project administrator for the Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement Program, at a news conference Monday near the tunnel's south end.

That opening will only come about three weeks after the viaduct closes permanently starting Jan. 11, to allow crews to connect state Route 99 to the new roadway. WSDOT said in press materials that it would be the longest major highway closure in the region's history, a closure that will likely make travel through and around downtown Seattle nightmarish.

"Folks need to start thinking now about what their alternative transportation options are going to be," Nielsen said.

About 90,000 drivers use the viaduct each day, so that traffic will spill over onto surface streets or Interstate 5 to get through downtown Seattle during the closure. Even after the tunnel opens, Seattle will face a new thoroughfare through its downtown core, one vastly different from what was there before.

Transportation officials advised that people consider public transit as an alternative to driving, but also cautioned that even that would be delayed and more crowded than ever as commuters try to get to and from downtown during the closure.

"Once the viaduct closes, riders should plan for and expect weeks of travel delays on all buses coming to and through the downtown Seattle area," said Terry White, deputy general manager for King County Metro.

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This time-lapse video captures the difficult and challenging work to disassemble the world’s largest-diameter tunneling machine. For four months, crews cut, hoisted and trucked away 8,000 tons of the machine's equipment and steel, removing it from inside the tunnel it had built. Up next – finishing the double-deck highway inside and installing all the operating systems to open Seattle's new SR 99 tunnel by early 2019. -WSDOT

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Delays will first impact the 12 routes that normally use the viaduct, but will spread throughout the system, he added.

White said details about rerouting for bus routes that use the viaduct would be shared soon on Metro's website.

WSDOT planned to add incident response teams during the closure, and Nielsen said the state would open up HOV lanes on I-5 to all traffic to help improve flow.

King County Water Taxi service to West Seattle will run with two boats during the closure and possibly longer as ramp closures ahead of and after the tunnel opening were expected to have further impacts to traffic. Additionally, Metro will double up shuttles to and from the water taxi on the West Seattle side (routes 773 and 775), said Paul Brodeur, King County Marine Division Director.

The service also planned to offer a "park and float" option at Pier 2, a little more than a half mile from Seacrest Park, with dedicated shuttles to the water taxi dock at the park.

While the full closure of the viaduct was expected roughly three weeks ahead of the opening of the tunnel, officials also said the southbound off-ramp to Atlantic Street, near the stadiums, would close roughly a week earlier, and then a northbound off-ramp to Dearborn Street would be closed a week or two beyond the tunnel's opening.

Seattle's DOT planned to have its operations center open 24 hours a day, seven days a week during the closure, and had already shared construction details with mapping services to make sure drivers aren't routed into closed roads, said Heather Marx, SDOT's director of downtown mobility.

SDOT will also put in place temporary parking restrictions and temporarily modify or revoke some construction permits to help ease downtown traffic during the closure, she added.

The tunnel opening will be a significant change for downtown drivers, as the tunnel has no midtown on or off ramps, and for transit commuters, as Metro currently has no plans for bus service through the tunnel.

"The ways we get around in Seattle are about to change forever," Marx said. She added that the tunnel opening and viaduct closure were just the beginning in the five -year "period of maximum constraint" in downtown Seattle, with historic downtown construction, the coming rerouting of buses out of the bus tunnel and onto Third Avenue, and other transportation projects.

"Change is really hard, but we're all in this together," she said.

The tunnel will eventually be a toll highway, with a fee somewhere between $1 and $2.75 to pass, but will initially open toll-free, Nielsen said. He couldn't say for sure when the toll would take effect.

Seattle Tunnel Partners had said for months that it hoped to have the tunnel ready to open this fall, but as that date started to look later, WSDOT and other state and local organizations foresaw even worse gridlock should the closure extend into the holiday season, Nielsen said. That was a factor in deciding to hold the opening until early 2019, he said.

Once the tunnel does open, crews will almost immediately begin demolishing the viaduct, which will cause its own traffic issues, though Nielsen didn't get at specifics when asked. He said the transition would likely impact traffic well beyond the tunnel's opening.

Work on the tunnel began in 2013 and the underground highway was originally expected to open in 2015. Bertha, the tunnel boring machine designed for the project, broke down little more than 1,000 feet into the project and didn't get up and running again until near the end of 2015. Boring on the tunnel was completed in April 2017, and crews have since worked to complete the two-deck highway inside the tunnel.